Government spending went up under President Obama because it was supposedto go up. The dramatic increases in food stamps, TANF, and unemployment insurance was supposed to increase because of the social safety nets that were put in place to protect average Americans in the event of economic downturns.

And because of the last catastrophic recession, the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, Obama (and Congress) had no choice but to increase government spending to help millions of Americans who lost their jobs and their homes (yes, even Republican voters benefited from these same programs).

But let’s not forget how the recession started: Under George W. Bush we had more deregulation, the out-sourcing of 52,000 factories (which Mitt Romney helped along), two unpaid wars, tax breaks for the rich (for which people like Mitt Romney benefited the most), and trillions more in spending for many other pork barrel projects (e.g. "The Road to Nowhere" for Sarah Palin). The recession was years in the making, so how can any sane person believe that one man with only 4 years in office, and with 2 years of Republican obstructionism, be expected to turn the economy around on a dime?

During good economic times, we were supposed to build up our reserves (like we did under Bill Clinton), but instead, the Republicans went on a spending spree. It was part of the GOP plan to increase debt, which I’ll get to later. Now the GOP is complaining about "kicking the can down the road" when it comes to our government debt. And to fix it, the GOP wants the very ones who were the most hurt by the recession to suffer more.

Simply put, the GOP’s plan for reducing the deficit is to cut food stamps and Medicaid (and other social programs) for the poor, cut Medicare and Social Security for the elderly and disabled, while at the same time cutting taxes for the rich, subsidizing profitable corporations like big oil, and subsidizing the rich and famous — including Tea Party politicians such as Michelle Bachmann.

The Tea Party darling and Republican congresswoman Michele Bachmann and her husband’s "mental health" clinic (Bachmann & Associates) received nearly $30,000 from the government. They also received another $260,000 in federal farm subsidies. And on average, they also received $600 a month from the government for each of their 23 adopted children — to feed them. But she and everyone else in the Tea Party and the GOP wants to cut food stamps for the unemployed and poor to balance the budget.

As an aside: In 2008, Michele Bachmann and her husband Marcus moved from their 3,056 square-foot Stillwater Minnesota home where they had lived for 16 years and moved into a new 5,300 square-foot home (built in 2007). The new house, also in Stillwater (West Lakeland Township, Minnesota) is located overlooking the 18th hole on the StoneRidge Golf Course where couples memberships are $4,150 annually. Their new home ( 4 bed/4 bath) was priced at $1.75 million when it first appeared in the 2007 Parade of Homes and featured as a “dream home". Later it was assessed at $1.27 million in 2008, but the Bachmanns nabbed it for a cool $760,000. Michele Bachmann also owns a share of a 950-acre farm in the town of Montana in Wisconsin. Her share is worth $500,000 to $1 million. She never need food stamps. (Her house and farm are pictured at the bottom of this post.)

You may remember when Tea Party radical Mike Pence, the Republican U.S. Representative for Indiana’s 6th Congressional, said of the U.S. government: “Shut it down!”

He wasn’t being overly dramatic or exaggerating…he was dead serious, as are most of the Tea Party members in the House. It’s all part of a real plan the GOP had hatched decades ago.

The U.S. debt is real, but the “crisis” is fake. As James Kwak, an associate professor at University of Connecticut School of Law and co-author White House Burning writes, even though it’s “a real problem that needs to be addressed; we need to address it in the way that’s best for the American people as a whole; that means preserving the social insurance programs that almost everyone depends on.”

Yet the Republicans, the Tea Party, John Boehner and Mitt Romney are trying to turn the national debt back into a major political issue again. And you can expect the Republicans to bang on this drum from now until November.

“Starve the Beast” is a conscious strategy by conservatives to force cuts in federal spending by deliberately bankrupting the country. As conceived by the right-wing intellectual Irving Kristol in 1980, the plan called for Republicans to create a “fiscal problem” (or “debt crisis”) by slashing taxes — and then foist the pain of re-imposing fiscal discipline (austerity) onto future Democratic administrations (e.g. Obama) who, in Kristol’s words, would be forced to “tidy up afterward.”

Starving the beast is the fiscal-political strategy of American conservatives to cut taxes in order to deprive the government of revenue in a deliberate effort to create a fiscal budget “crisis” that is intended to force the federal government to reduce spending (rather than restore tax levels). The short and medium term effect of the strategy has increased United States public debt rather than reduced spending.

We saw this vividly played out last year when the Tea Party Republicans almost shut down the government, which resulted in having the United States’ credit rating reduced.

Just recently Democrats controlling the Senate rejected for the second year in a row Wednesday a budget plan passed by House Republicans. The 58-41 vote against the GOP budget came after a daylong debate in which Democrats blasted Republicans for refusing to consider tax increases as part of a solution to trillion-dollar deficits.

The Republicans in turn attacked Democrats for not offering a budget at all. Republicans launched the debate, which was aimed less at successfully passing a bill than highlighting the failure of Senate Democrats to deal with a budget deficit expected to top $1 trillion for the fourth consecutive year.

The Senate was to vote on five separate budget plans, including one based on President Barack Obama’s February budget and offered by Republicans to embarrass Democrats and the White House. It failed on a 99-0 vote. Three GOP senators elected in 2010 with Tea Party support also offered plans in a competition to see whose budget could cut government the most.

Now the Leader of the House John Boehner is threatening to shut down the government again.

Each GOP plan would sharply cut domestic programs such as food stamps and unemployment benefits, and also calls for a dramatic transformation of Medicare that would turn it into a voucher-like program. Democrats called for a “balanced” solution blending tax increases on wealthier people with less severe spending cuts.

“We will not allow the debt and deficit to be reduced on the backs of the middle class and most vulnerable Americans without calling on the wealthiest to contribute,” says Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) “That is not fair, it’s not what the American people want, and it’s simply not going to happen.”

Many Republicans have already publicly come out and said they refused to compromise.

The GOP will do anything to have their own way and to get Obama out of the White House, even if it means shutting down the government, and to hell with America’s senior citizens, the unemployed, the disabled, and the poor — even if it means another downturn for America’s credit rating.

The GOP wants to convince voters that the U.S. is spending too much borrowed money, but the GOP wasn’t so concerned about debt when George W. Bush was the president; and the GOP isn’t concerned enough to raise taxes on billionaires. Instead, the GOP’s plan to fix this “sudden and immediate crisis” is to cut food stamps for unemployed Americans — and then give more tax breaks to all the billionaires who laid them off. To literally “starve the beast”.

While although I realize that half the members of Congress are millionaires, but still, if the GOP wants to force a government shut down (and is so adamant about cutting off funds to the most needy in our country), I would suggest that we first start with government handouts congressional paychecks.

See my other related post “Paul Ryan and the GOP has Waged Class War with Food Stamps”

(Below) One Beast the Government Didn’t Starve – In addition to all her other government handouts, Michele Bachmann also gets an annual salary of $174,000 a year from the beasts.

If I opened a lemonade stand and paid some kid in the neighborhood 5 cents an hour to sell lemonade, I too could call myself a "job creator". Sure, the guy that sells me the lemons, sugar and plastic cups is making a profit. But what good am I doing for the economy as a whole, and what kind of jobs would I creating?

But by its very nature, our economic system of capitalism and free markets isn’t about creating jobs, it’s about creating money. Jobs are just sometimes the by-product.

Banks gamble with derivatives and speculate in the commodities market to make profits, not to create low-paying bank teller jobs.

Manufacturers automate and robotize whenever possible to cut payroll costs, and technology and computers (called innovation), allow companies to produce more with less. Whenever possible, not only are their products exported, but their factories are exported as well to take advantage of low labor costs overseas.

Just since the beginning of the "Bush Years" alone, the United States lost most of it’s better paying jobs in manufacturing. Over 52,000 factories had closed, but for almost 30 years before that, outsourcing became common practice as many companies had union employees with collective bargaining agreements that negotiated wages to help keep up with the rising costs of living.

And if a factory wasn’t outsourced to foreign soil, companies like Boeing moved to places like South Carolina. As Governor Nikki Haley says: "We don’t have unions in South Carolina because we don’t need unions in South Carolina.

And when a company downsizes, if often means that hours are cut to deny full-time benefits, while many times employees are required to take on extra duties, creating "higher productivity".

The fast food, service, and retail industries (e.g. McDonalds, Dominos, Staples, and Wal-Mart) improve our lives in some ways in the matter of convenience and lower prices, but in many ways they do not. They propagate a vast number of low-paying jobs, both here and abroad, that reduces our standard of living and reduces our overall tax-base.

The research and redevelopment that takes place in our universities and government research facilities, are funded primarily by the taxpayers. Corporate R&D has become a much smaller share of their expenditures, but private companies greatly profit from the gains made by taxpayer-paid research and development (government jobs).

Bloomberg’s Business Week has called “private equity” a re-branding of the corporate raider (leveraged buyout firms) of the 1980s. Among the most common investment strategies in private equity are: leveraged buyouts, venture capital, growth capital, distressed investments and mezzanine capital.

In a typical leveraged buyout transaction, a private equity firm buys a majority control of an existing company. There is a distinct difference from a venture capital or growth capital investment, in which the investors invest in young or emerging companies (like Staples in the 1986), and rarely obtain majority control.

Besides his other "investments", Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital used venture capital to finance companies such Staples. The 100,000 jobs he takes credit for were all the low-paying jobs at Staples and the Sports Authority; but Mitt shouldn’t take credit for that, Staples founder Thomas G. Stemberg can take credit if you don’t take into consideration their employee relations.

By the end of 2011, Staples had about 89,000 employees. And Bain Capital was only one of many private equity firms that invested in Sports Authority, now a private company.

The Gartner Group (information technology research) formerly Saatchi & Saatchi, a London-based advertising agency, was acquired in 1990 with funding from Bain Capital and Dun & Bradstreet. In 2001 the name was simplified to Gartner.

Mitt Romney’s recent ad regarding Steel Dynamics implies that Bain Capital was a “lone white knight". But in truth, there were eight financiers. Even more telling, the state and local government pumped in $37 million — twice as much as Bain Capital did. Then, five years later, Bain sold its stake and walked off with an $85 million profit, courtesy of this “government largesse.”

SUCCESS! Bain Capital bought Wesley Jessen Vision Care for $6 million in 1994. It had been a division of Schering Plough and was not profitable. Bain Capital and a new CEO turned it around and sold it to Ciba Geigy for over $300 million in 2001.Today, the company is part of Ciba Vision.

But Mitt Romney, as a private equity manager, wasn’t about creating jobs, but profits. He didn’t innovate and do anything to make the human condition of the economy as a whole any better for the common good. His "investments" sometimes produced the by-product of low-paying jobs in companies like Staples; but his efforts also produced many other low-paying jobs in foreign countries. The jobs that weren’t outsourced or lost to downsizing were "re-created" to pay much less without healthcare and pension plans..

Mister Romney, like all corporate raiders, specialized in buying financially troubled companies (many on the verge of bankruptcy), breaking them up, and selling them off in smaller parts at a price that’s worth more than the whole company, for profit. The workers bore the brunt of the cost with lost pensions, lost benefits, and lower wages — if they weren’t laid off.

Corporate raiders such as Carl Icahn, T. Boone Pickens, Kirk Kerkorian, Michael Milken, (and Gordon Gekko and “Larry the Liquidator") bought a large number of shares giving them significant voting rights to enact measures such as replacing top executives, downsizing operations, and liquidating the company.

Companies have used a variety of strategies to thwart the efforts of corporate raiders that include shareholders’ rights plans (poison pills), super-majority voting, dramatic increases of the amount of debt on the company’s balance sheet, "golden parachutes", and strategic mergers with a “white knight.”

The threat of the corporate raid would sometimes lead to the practice of “greenmail”, where a corporate raider or other party would acquire a significant stake in the stock of a company and receive an "incentive payment" (effectively a bribe) from the company in order to avoid pursuing a hostile takeover of the company. Greenmail represented a transfer payment from a company’s existing shareholders to a third party investor (like Bain Capital) and provided no value to existing shareholders but greatly benefited existing managers (like Mitt Romney).

Corporate raiders like Mitt Romney cause large economic disruption and create unemployment as factories are sold off and closed. While he might have made money (whether the company failed or succeeded) he just made money, so therefore he is considered "successful", while the company may have went bankrupt.

Bain Capital invested in Stage Stores in 1988 (family apparel, shoes, etc) when the company was young. Stage went public in 1996 with 9,606 employees. Bain realized $184 million from the investment. The company went into chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2000.

Bain Capital bought Dade from Baxter in 1994. Bain Capital took Dade public in 1996 and cashed out $216 million. Dade went bankrupt in 2002.

DDI Corp produced circuit boards for the telecom business. It went public with 1,800 employees in 1999. The company’s business declined and it went into chapter 11 bankruptcy.

American Pad & Paper (Ampad) was a manufacturer and marketer of paper-based office products. In 1992, Bain Capital acquired Ampad from Mead. It went public in 1996, but declined soon thereafter, going into chapter 11 in 1999.

And of all those people who were laid off – - while he himself might not have been physically in the office at Bain Capital since 1999, these days his friends, his philosophy, and his money still works there. And since Mitt Romney "retired", even though some of these companies may have come back, it was with no thanks to Mitt & Co.

New York Times – "Mr. Romney never really left Bain. In what would be the final deal of his private equity career, he negotiated a retirement agreement with his former partners that has paid him a share of Bain’s profits ever since, bringing the Romney family millions of dollars in income each year."

But Section 83 of the U.S. Tax Code suggests that the granting of a stake in a firm’s future profits in "carried interest" must be in connection with the performance of services. What service does Mitt continue to offer Bain?

And Mitt Romney pays only a 15% tax rate on his take, not the higher income tax bracket of 35%, or that of a firefighter, teacher, or someone in law enforcement who typically pay a 25% tax rate…those "high-priced government employees" earning an average middle-class income of $50,000 a year.

And Mitt pays ZERO in Social Security and Medicare taxes on that "investment income" as well.

And what about all those off-shore banks accounts?

After I made a profit on my lemonade stand, I laid off that kid, took my cash, and built an elevator for my car. Just like me, if Mitt Romany is elected, he’ll take lemons and make lemonade for himself and all his pals, then lay us all off. It will do nothing for our economy or tax base as a whole, but will only enrich the top 1% more than they already are.

And what about his dog? I hope Mitt treats the rest of his family better.

My other posts about the King of Bain:

• Mitt Romney’s Mormonism & Gay Marriage
• Why Mitt Romney May be Mentally Unstable. No, really!
• Can I call Mitt Romney’s pal Edward Conard an @sshole?
• Ann Romney Needs to get a REAL Job!
• How many jobs did Mitt Romney create last year?
• Mitt Romney Connected to $8.5 billion Ponzi Scheme
• Mitt and Ann Romney are Full of Horse Manure!
• Mitt Romney: Lobbyists, Special Tax Rates & Tax Evasion
• A vote for Mitt Romney is a vote for George W. Bush
• Tax rates under Clinton, Bush, Obama & Romney
• Mitt Romney: Mister 15% and Platinum Parachutes
• Efficiency expert Mitt Romney: “You’re expendable.”